Avuncular American

BRAC à la française: CINC Sarkozy and His Army

(Photo Source: AP)

The politics of national defense

BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure, a bureacratic DoD term that doesn't translate well into elegant French) is nevertheless what is on the President Nicolas Sarkozy's mind these days when he considers France's defense options.  BRAC - that lengthy process that the US last went through in 2005-2006, involving multiple clearances through military, Congressional, and state and local filters before any base is closed - is basically what Sarkozy and his government are proposing, though they are holding off until the end of July (maybe they are hoping that as much of France goes on vacation, no one will notice).  Update: today's "Telegramme de Brest" says that the announcement will be made by Prime Minister Francois Fillon on 24 July).

Though much of the plan had already been leaked, last week's Bastille Day pageant was allowed to take place before official pronouncements of painful cuts.  The outlines are clear, however: close bases, disband units, and make France's Army (the Navy is also due for hits, though of a lesser order, while the Air Force is to be trimmed by almost 25%) better fit for deployment abroad, whether alone, or as part of UN, EU, or NATO operations.  Sarkozy, as President of the European Union Council for the rest of 2008, also has in mind making forces available for a new "European Pillar of NATO."

As in an American BRAC process, much of this doesn't go down well with those most concerned: the military hierarchy, and the local hosts who depend on a unit's presence in their jurisdiction for economic stimulus, a kind of reverse NIMBY: "cuts are fine, as long as they're not in my constituency."  Given the military's traditional presence on France's littoral or along its eastern and northern borders, these "legacy" bases are often in economically deprived areas, making the hits even harder to absorb.  But they probably make sense from a standpoint of rationalization (much was made of the move of the 13th "Dragon" Paratroop Regiment [RDP, a reconnaissance unit] from its longtime home in the Moselle valley along the border with Germany, to southwest France where several of its sister special forces units are stationed.  Local officials only see the zero-sum aspect of losing, in the case of the RDP, half of its population.  In an excellent July 23 article, Catherine Magueur in Le Telegramme shows that party politics - shocking! - plays a large part in gerrymandering the new military map of France.  Too bad for bases and communities represented by the opposition...

Civilian control of the military

All this was hovering in the background (the excellent "JDD," le Journal de Dimanche on 13 July had a special two page pre-Bastille Day spread on Sarkozy and a discontented military) on 14 July, when France's military showed its finest marching style down the Champs Elysées.  Luckily for Sarkozy, the French military has matured from the days when, a half century ago in Algeria, its frustrated generals staged a "putsch" that helped fell the 4th Republic.  In 2008, there is grumbling in the ranks, where some feel that Sarkozy "humiliated" the honor of professional soldiers when he spoke of "amateurs" after a live-fire accident during a public event in Carcassonne - resulting in the resignation of the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Cuche.  Other officers anonymously joined a collective called "Surcouf" to sign a broadside against the "White Paper" that in the US context would have been the equivalent of the initial BRAC recommendations.  But don't expect any "putsch."

In the end, all the military wants is a little respect (one senior officer admitted that "the army is une grande sentimentale").  Many realize that "modernization" is overdue, and lament having to spend scarce resources on excess manpower when what they really need is spare parts.  Sarkozy's task (one of the many he has set himself in his "hyperpresidency") is to convince the French Army and its constituency that his reforms are in a context of recognition of the Army's worth.  One issue to monitor closely: as Sarkozy develops his "European Pillar of NATO" proposals and tries to leverage American acceptance of EU defense prerogatives in exchange for French reintegration into NATO's military command, check the French military reaction.  Away from the EU/NATO negotiations, will Sarkozy be seen as strengthening the French pillar, or undermining its foundations?  And what of the multiplicity of commitments?  Former defense minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, in the JDD, questioned how France could maintain 18 current overseas deployments, and entertain expanded commitments under an activist Sarkozy, all while reducing its military establishment.

As with all things Sarkozy, it's best to wait until the fireworks are long over, the dust settles, and then look at his military modernization campaign with a little bit of "recul."  In the meantime, wish the French Army a quiet summer holiday, and a bit of distance from its hyperactive Commander-in-Chief.

Mountaintop Trenches: The Dolomites and Europe’s Future

You have to do a bit of climbing to get to these trenches.  They happen to be Italian trenches in the photo on the left, but on the other side of the Piave Valley there are similar Austrian ditches, scraped out of the rock and peat on the hillsides of these Dolomite peaks.  This is the setting of Hemingway's  "A Farewell to Arms."

Take your worst mental image of trench warfare – with its mud, cold, vermin, and high explosives – and then transpose it to the top of a 6,000 foot mountain during several winters.  That’s the World War I recollection of people in this Italo-Germanic corner of the Alps.  Check out the official site of what has to be one of the most spectacular open-air museums dedicated to the First World War, that of Lagazuoi and the 5 Torri.

Our hiking group - formed ad-hoc by Charlie Tessari (photo below right, looking at the formerly Austrian-held positions), wintertime ski instructor, spring and summer hill walking guide, and author of a book with some of the most beautiful photos of this region - is mostly Italian, and of all ages.  We and a family of Slovaks form the Anglophone contingent, and we get abridged versions of Charlie's explanations of the flora, fauna, and geology of this unique mountain region.  The Slovaks know of the Piave Valley; their grandfathers fought here when Slovakia was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  They grew up hearing songs of the Piave, and of their grandfathers' long-defunct multinational country.

Nowadays they can drive a few hundred kilometers across Austria and visit the battlefields as tourists.  Slovakia, which has gone through several national mutations in the 90 years since the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburgs waved goodbye to the world scene, is now a part of NATO, of the European Union, and will soon spend Euros just like their former Italian enemies.

Paul Hoffman, former New York Times correspondent and author of “The Sunny Side of the Alps” (a gift from an old friend who knew exactly what we’d appreciate on this trip), writes about this former Austrian region from personal experience.  He married a local girl from the Sud Tyrol (the Italian Alto Adige) in the inter war years, and witnessed first hand the excesses of Fascist nationalism, where the Germanic names on gravestones were Italianized – even the dead weren’t allowed to keep their identity.

World War II and the fall of Fascism led to a mellowing of the nationalism up here, and now signs are bilingual, and there’s a relaxed approach to language.  This year, the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War is being marked along the old mountain battlefields by a series of concerts, multinational hikes and climbs, and various other events.  Europe might be confused over which direction it should take after recent reverses, but there is one avenue that is no longer an option: war.  Make tourism, not artillery duels.  That booming across the valleys these days is summertime thunder, not high explosive.

There's probably no better place in Europe than the peacefully spectacular Dolomites to contemplate the ultimate stupidity of war.

Iraq and the "S" Word - Sovereignty

“The Iraqi demands are unacceptable to the Americans, and the American demands are unacceptable to the Iraqis, and the result is that we have reached an impasse,” the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said during a meeting with journalists in Jordan. “The Iraqis will not consent to an agreement that infringes their sovereignty.”

Alissa J. Rubin, "Talks With U.S. on Security Pact Are at an Impasse, the Iraqi Prime Minister Says," New York Times 14 June 2008

In my experience in matters diplomatic, when the other sides deploys the "S" word, they've reached for their big guns.  Not that Iraq out-guns the United States in any sense of the term - but that is exactly when negotiators reach for the "S" word.  When the imbalance of power is such that the weaker party can only fall back on its cherished sovereignty, in the face of the other side that holds all the cards... except the ultimate one in diplomacy: "Are you messing with my sovereignty?"

This argument, of course, only works when the weaker party is dealing with a country that is sensitive to sovereignty matters.  A dictatorship might not care a hoot about a neighbor's sovereignty, especially if there are already hostile relations prevailing.  Democracies, however, are usually mindful of touching someone's sovereignty buttons.  The US usually cares, for example, when the country that raises the sovereignty defense possesses something that the US wants.

Sometimes nations will deploy the sovereignty defense over the silliest of issues: I recall a matter of a conference in Africa that was sure to founder on the shoals of disrespect for Nigerian sovereignty, were the US co-sponsors to dismiss the requirement for "hostesses in national dress" at the opening ceremony (said hostesses being the girlfriends, mistresses, daughters and nieces of ministers and other Big Men).  The Americans caved, and had to pay for the hostesses' nice outfits.  Sovereignty prevailed.

In the case of the current negotiations in Iraq, however, the stakes are anything but trivial.  And the leverage exerted by the US is considerable.  It's not just the 140,000 or so troops occupying the country; I refer you to veteran Iraq reporter Patrick Cockburn of London's The Independent, who was interviewed on June 12 on Democracy Now!  Said Cockburn:

Iraqi reserves, Iraqi money, is in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  It dates from 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and there are still sanctions against Iraq as a danger to the rest of the world. That money, about $50 billion, is in the bank. But there have been many court cases brought against it. It’s protected currently by a Presidential immunity. And what US negotiators in Baghdad have been implying to their Iraqi counterparts is that if they don’t cut a deal on American terms, then that Presidential immunity might lapse at the end of the year, and the Iraqis wouldn’t be able to get their hands on these massive reserves, which they need very badly.

$50 billion is serious leverage.

Cockburn, who has reported on this story extensively, has pointed out how the evolving (or stalled, according to al-Maliki) talks are not classic "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) negotiations, over technical issues (APO postal delivery, PX privileges, duty-free Commissary imports - all those nice things that mark the American presence in places like Germany, Italy, or Japan), but talks whose outcome

... really will determine whether Iraq is an independent country or not. Or will it be a client state of the US?... the US negotiators were demanding initially fifty-eight bases. They’re not calling them permanent bases, though that’s exactly what they are. The bases might have, let’s say, an Iraqi soldier outside and a single strand of barbed wire, in which case the Iraqis will supposedly be in charge of their defense, so it won’t be an American base. But everybody knows that it is. Then there’s the question of immunity for American soldiers and Iraqi contractors, i.e. they won’t come under Iraqi law. And the US will also control airspace and have various other rights. Now, although Ryan Crocker and President Bush are saying Iraq under this new agreement will once again be a sovereign nation, most of the rights we associate with a sovereign nation will be in the possession of the US.

The always vigilant Helena Cobban ("Just World News") has much more detail on what's in the "SOFA" (and when all this got started), in her analysis of just-released National Security Archive documents.

Next time you hear PM al-Maliki use the word "sovereignty," consider the context, the stakes in these negotiations, and the relative leverage of the two parties.  As Cockburn says, Iraq since the early 1990's (no-fly zones, oil-for-food, sanctions) has experienced years of "diminished formal sovereignty."  They went from years of Saddam's sovereignty-within-constraints to - despite purple fingers - CPA "Orders" and now a SOFA-defined future.  No wonder they're a bit touchy about that "S" word.

War - If You Can Afford It

Aid groups say the crisis in Ethiopia was the worst since 1984, when a famine captured the world's attention and killed around one million people. The current drought, in a country where more than 80 per cent of its 79 million people live off the land, has been compounded by global food price rises. The famine comes as Ethiopian troops fight a bloody battle [in] Somalia, backing the government against Islamic insurgents.

The Telegraph (UK) 9 June 2008

On the face of it, there is absolutely no correlation between the Ethiopian famine and its intervention in neighboring Somalia.

Nor is there a link between the events in the Horn of Africa and the American invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

Except for this: sustainability, and "affordability."  Just as a thoughtful observer might reflect "What the hell are the Ethiopians doing... occupying a neighboring country when they can't feed their own people?..." so too might that same question be asked of the United States in Iraq.  "What the hell are the Americans still doing in Iraq when _____?"  Here you get to fill in the blank:

• they allow huge swaths of their population to go without health care?
• bridges collapse, cities sink because "it's too expensive" to fix them?
• millions are evicted from their homes, and the financial system teeters?
• they allow the dollar to fall through the floor, and China owns what's left?

War, which leaders assure us they want to avoid at the very time that they are sharpening their swords, is an expensive matter.  In the case of Iraq, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz puts it at 3 trillion dollars.  Ethiopia, which is waging its war in Somalia with the encouragement of the United States, is presumably getting aid from same, but there is an opportunity cost.  Money spent on military hardware is often in place of, not in addition to, spending on helping the Ethiopias of the world grow food.  And where does the money for US military aid really come from?  If the Bush Administration has run budget deficits since it came to office, which it has, then isn't much of government spending like a national credit card?  See reference to China, above.

Which brings me back to Iraq.  This Administration likes to outsource things that used to be the prerogative of governments.  Like the contracting out of security, infrastructure, even intelligence functions, in Iraq.  If you can't win their hearts and minds with your power or principles, you just open up your purse strings.  This is from "Buying Security in Baghdad" by Anna Badhken in last month's Salon.com:

[In a Baghdad neighborhood] ... the U.S. military here pays a monthly salary of approximately $300 to about 300 people, [Sgt. James] Braet says. Some of them work on the neighborhood council, and some of them are members of a pro-government Sunni militia called Sons of Iraq.

"I'd say 80 percent of these people we pay don't do anything," Braet said. "It's just free money"

"So, in other words, you are buying security," I say.  "Pretty much," he responds, and goes back to his steak.

I figure that if the population of Iraq is about 26 million, and if around 7 million of those are adult males (sorry, ladies, but you probably don't have to be paid not to kill), it would cost, at the rate of $300 x 7 million = $2.1 billion a month to buy peace in Iraq.  For some reason, this free-market (of sorts) approach to peace purchasing hasn't gotten sufficient attention.  It might have to do with scruples about noble causes.

$2 billion a month.  The US is currently spending about $12 billion per month in Iraq.  This money is not only "off budget" in the form of funding "supplementals," it's also "off shore."  It's money that the US has to "borrow" from China and Gulf oil investors who currently deign to buy US debt.  So, in one sweeping feat of Bushite outsourcing, I say let's NOT "cut out the middleman" - let's bring him in on the deal: outsource the occupation of Iraq to China.  China has few scruples about dealing with dodgy governments in its quest for raw materials for the Chinese industrial machine.  China might not quibble about human rights, freedom of the press, all those things that the US government spends lots of effort promoting.  China just wants whatever raw materials you possess, thank you.  Maybe they'll even get Iraq's huge oil reserves secured and sell us what they can't use.  With $10 billion saved every month, we might be able to afford some.

Iraq has oil; China needs oil.  The US needs out.  We can't afford Iraq.  They can.

Now, on Ethiopia's famine and Somalia dilemma: do they have anything that China can buy?

Burma's "Deadly Decision" - Aid Ships Steam Away

"Over the past three weeks we have made at least 15 attempts to convince the Burmese  government to allow our ships, helicopters, and landing craft to provide additional disaster relief for the people of Burma, but they have refused us each and every time. It  is time for the USS Essex group to move on to its next mission. However, we will leave several heavy lift aircraft in place in Thailand so as to continue to support international  community efforts to deliver aid," [Commander of U.S. Pacific  Command, Adm. Timothy J.] Keating said.

The Essex ships will now head to the coast of Thailand to backload their remaining  helicopters and personnel on June 11th. "However", said Keating, "should the Burmese  rulers have a change of heart and request our full assistance for their suffering people we are prepared to help."

Press Release, 3 June 2008, US Pacific Command

This has to be one of the most frustrating commands that the good admiral has had to give in his career.   Navy and other US military personnel are used to delivering timely, massive assistance in all corners of the world, whenever natural disasters strike (my first experience in the Foreign Service was helping shepherd Navy and Coast Guard relief to volcano victims on the island of St. Vincent in the Caribbean).  In the response to Cyclone Nargis and the unprecedented devastation it caused the inhabitants of Burma's Iriwaddy delta, US, French, and British naval ships steamed to Burma's coast.  And waited.  Only to be turned away, repeatedly.

There are lingering glimmers of hope, carrots still dangled out there for the jingoistic junta:

• Admiral Keating's order of June 3 is to take effect June 5, giving two days to reconsider;
• The vessels are to head to the Thai coast, to "backload" helicopters and personnel involved in the relief efforts;
• This operation is to take place June 11, giving the Burmese generals another week to reconsider.

But no one should hold their breath.  Any regime that ignores cyclone warnings and fails to alert its own populace, then deliberately abandons the resulting victims to starvation, disease, and the elements, is not going to be shamed by earnest pleas or strong condemnation.

The only question remaining for the United States is whether it should use the opportunity, awaiting off the Thai coast, to offload further relief supplies on board those ships.  France, whose Mistral contained 15 days' worth of aid for 100,000 people and shelter for a further 60,000, decided to hand over its supplies to the UN's World Food Program after a similar rebuff from the Burmese junta.  The Mistral arrives in Phuket, Thailand today.

As frustrating as that decision must have been for France (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Burmese attitude "particularly shocking"), offloading its aid was the right decision.  What was it going to do - sail off over the horizon with its holds full of tons of supplies for another rainy day?  What will the Essex Group do next week?

"The Irriwaddy" ("Covering Burma and Southeast Asia), that authoritative Burmese exile publication, has an excellent opinion piece by Aung Zaw, "No Warships Please, We're Burmese," which provides some interesting history to clarify the junta's allergy to warships:

It is safer for an impassive Than Shwe [junta leader] to allow hundreds of thousands of villagers in the Irrawaddy delta region to die rather than permitting a US relief mission to save them—a deadly decision indeed. Than Shwe knows full well that millions of Burmese wait in hope for the arrival of US warships, and not only for the relief supplies they would bring.

At the time of the 1988 democracy uprising, Burma’s military leaders lodged a complaint with the US embassy after sighting a US naval fleet of five warships, including the aircraft carrier Coral Sea, within Burmese territorial waters on the morning of 12 September, six days before the army staged a bloody coup.

The sighting caused “major concern” among Burmese leaders including Ne Win, who in the 1970s had secured US military assistance, including helicopters, in fighting communists and drug warlords.  In those years, Burma sent its officers to the US General Staff College for training and study. Burma’s official policy was, and remains: Americans are welcome, except in times of political crisis.

Applying this policy, the military leaders even refused permission for a US C-130 plane to land in Rangoon in 1988 in order to evacuate US embassy staff during the anti-government uprising.

For paranoid dictators, one person's innocent offer of aid is another's Trojan Horse.  They won't change.  So just offload the cargo in Thailand, turn it over to the UN, and chalk it up to another bad experience with ungrateful dictators.

Women: Don't Do Peacekeeping Without Them

Lieutenant General Karlheinz Viereck is no-nonsense, and he is precise: "Just Do It," he says.  The "it" was the subject of his talk yesterday evening at the Belgian Royal High Institute for Defence (RHID): "Women Building Peace: Adding a gender perspective to enhance conflict management and operational effectiveness."

That might sound a bit "soft" or PC, but the General's message is simple: incorporating gender awareness in peace operations forces improves their effectiveness, and bolsters force protection.  General Viereck knows a thing or two on the subject: he commanded the 2006-2007 EUFOR mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and is Commander of the Bundeswehr Operations Command.

Viereck believes in the top-down approach (he opines that this is already accepted in EU operations, but that NATO still has a way to go); his ideal daily command group meeting clears away many of the uniformed "operators" but retains key advisers in the political, legal, cultural - and gender - fields.  Setting the example at the top, gender awareness is a key element of training in his multinational model, should contributing nations not already include that in their own training program.

In the DRC, Viereck says that including women in patrols was an essential element in "opening up" and helping secure previously no-go slum areas to his troops.  Because Congolese women are often the target of men-with-guns, Viereck notes that it was essential for Europeans-in-uniform to earn their respect and gain the confidence of the women, who also hold the key to access to the community.  Just as intelligence is vital to any mission and its own security, Viereck says it should be a given to include gender advisers and focal points at all levels, in the field as well as headquarters.

Viereck is careful to note that while a gender component is essential in any multinational force, its makeup and activities must be modified according to local conditions.  What works in Congo may not in Afghanistan.  Chatting after his talk, I asked him about the UN's Indian "All Woman" unit (an excellent BBC documentary gave it the non-PC title, "All Girl Squad") in Liberia, which some say is changing the paradigm in peacekeeping operations.  Ever precise, Viereck said that while he had no personal experience with female-only units, the German Navy has found that "women-heavy" ships, where the female-male ratio is heavily weighted towards the former, had a better disciplinary record than simply having a scattering of women in a crew.

In field operations, Viereck would simply be happy to have additional numbers of women.  In Congo, he trained and then rotated women from clerical positions into field patrols, with positive results in intel-gathering and in the "hearts & minds" category.  He indicates that in the Bundeswehr, women constitute roughly 8.7% of the troops, with Germany's goal to double that to 15% (note: the US Army has some 14% active duty women).

General Viereck's "passionate" (as he likes to call it) advocacy for gender awareness makes him a credible proponent for what some might see as a nice-but-optional approach to operations in dangerous missions.  His testimony is a real-world confirmation of the operational effectiveness of the international community's intent.  This focus on gender was enshrined in the 2000 UN Security Council Resolution 1325, "a landmark document that addresses the impact of war on women and stresses the importance of women's participation in all aspects of United Nations peacekeeping operations," according to the UN Chronicle.

Women: don't try peacekeeping without them.

(Photo Source: UN Chronicle Online)

Memorial Day Where It Counts

Ninety years ago, 368 Americans were buried in what was named Flanders Field Cemetery, one of the smallest of the overseas cemeteries run by the American Battle Monuments Commission.  We went there yesterday to help represent Democrats Abroad Belgium, whose wreath was placed at the foot of the white stone chapel in the center of the headstones.

We have been attending Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and other commemorations at ABMC cemeteries for years (I encourage you to visit their website and take a virtual tour).  Americans who have not had the honor of seeing these hallowed sites in person should be proud that their nation continues to take such good care of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines (and merchant marines) buried abroad.

My father survived World War II with only a couple of tiny shrapnel wounds, but his memories of harrowing battles in places like Guam, the Philippines, and Okinawa stayed with him until he passed away.  The soldiers buried in places like Flanders Field have only one surviving comrade, Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last American "doughboy."

Look at the picture.  American and Belgian flags at the foot of each cross or Star of David.  Every World War I and II American cemetery in the European Theater, whether in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, England, Italy... or in Tunisia, for the dead of the 1942-43 North African campaign... have the same array of flags, usually placed by local people or overseas Americans who keep the memory alive.  Further afield, in Latin America and in the Pacific, other cemeteries unvisited by me continue the same tradition.

Private Harry Volz of Wisconsin, whose Flanders Field grave is pictured here, died on November 10, 1918.  Students of history will know that 24 hours later, on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month," Armistice was declared and the guns fell silent.  A day too late for Pvt. Volz...

Edward G. Lengel, Associate Professor at UVA and author of "To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918," knows something about remembrance, and wrote this in yesterday's Washington Post:

The Civil War and World War II seem to lend themselves to good storytelling, as long as one avoids the ugly, depressing bits. They appear to have clear beginnings and endings, with dramatic heroes and villains. They move. World War I, by contrast, with its images of trench warfare and mustard gas, is not so easy to manipulate in a marketable manner. Popular historians consequently avoid it. As one trade publisher recently told me, World War I has "poor entertainment value." Attempts to discuss it, even with avid students of military history, often end with the same comments that veterans heard back in 1919: "It's all too dreadful," and so on. So powerful is this perception that even genuinely exciting stories -- those of Medal of Honor winners Charles W. Whittlesey, Alvin C. York, John L. Barkley and Freddie Stowers -- are ignored.

We should step back and think for a moment about what this says about Americans as people. Do we honor our veterans for all their sacrifices, or do we care only if they can tell us a good story? And who, then, is guilty of ingratitude?

World War II marked the end of this noble tradition of interring American war dead where they fell.  No Korean War, Vietnam War, Iraq War gravestones for Americans on those Mekong or Mesopotamian battlefields.  Maybe, to borrow Dr. Lengel's phrase, those conflicts lacked "clear beginnings and endings, with dramatic heroes and villains."  I have no doubt that there are heroes, and we've been told plenty about the "villains," but those "clear beginnings and endings?"  It's all so murky, so wrapped up in controversy over contrived incidents and confused war aims.  The Iraq War's "poor entertainment value" has been reflected in box office flops - it's pretty "dreadful" too.

Listening to yesterday's speeches (Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, himself from the World War I-ravaged town of Ypres-Ieper), gave a thoughtful speech in flawless English referring to the WW I foundations of transatlantic cooperation), I had the impression that there was a mite less triumphalism in the speeches by the official American representatives.  As if five years into another murky war without "clear beginnings and endings" have induced a certain realization that the endgame is unknown, and that the ending, while it certainly may not be clear, will be accomplished by a President other than the one who started it.

John Kerry asked, as a young Vietnam combat veteran who had turned against that divisive war: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"  Private Volz from Wisconsin, who 90 years ago in Flanders Field died a day before peace was declared, can rest in peace, as should the dead from Vietnam and Iraq, whatever we think of the merits of the wars in which they fell.  But before we ask a soldier to be the last one to die in Iraq, we had better clarify why we are still there, fighting for whom?

The Ineluctable Reality of Borders

Those pesky external border posts - poof! ...they're gone

 One of the occupational hazards of being an avuncular blogger on the Brussels lecture circuit is that I now get a multiplicity of invitations to events.  Many of these are welcome, providing useful fodder for posts.  Some are eminently avoidable, such as a recent invitation to join a demonstration protesting the expulsion of undocumented immigrants ("illegal aliens," as we would say in the US).  I'll give that one a pass, because I don't agree that "Borders = Repression," as the organizers would have it.

Living in a member state - some say the "capital" - of the European Union, and one which is a proud member of the Schengen (unguarded border) Zone, it's easy to forget the function of border controls.  Now that the Euro and Schengen have been a reality for the better part of a decade, crossing from Belgium to France and back through Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands can be accomplished without even showing your passport and without changing your currency.  In multinational border regions, such as the Maastricht-Aachen-Liege triangle or the Luxembourg-Lorraine-Trier-Belgian Ardennes area, commuters of several nationalities can and do live in one country, work in another, and shop in a third, all in the course of a single day.

For this benign corner of Europe, the nasty work of external land border controls has been "outsourced" or at least subcontracted to those Schengen members on the periphery (I stress land borders, since all countries are still responsible for monitoring international arrivals at their air and sea ports, as well as their coastlines).  But here's the rub: despite Schengen (or perhaps because of it), there is still a problem of undocumented immigrants in every EU country, and it presents a challenge to democratically elected governments.  Because there are parties - some of them also democratically elected - on the Flemish separatist extreme right who use the immigration issue as a wedge to gain votes and seats in the very assemblies for which they express contempt.  Which is my very long way of saying that Border Controls ≠ Repression.  They're just part of the landscape.

Uti possidetis and the importance of internal borders - especially in Belgium

According to Wikipedia, we are told that uti possidetis (Latin for "as you possess") is a concept in international law, and that "the term has historically been used to legally formalize territorial conquests."  Thanks to Dr. Christian Behrendt, writing in the Brussels daily Le Soir on April 30, we have an expert opinion (he's a professor of comparative constitutional law at the University of Liege) on why, in the next couple of days, defining internal borders will be of utmost importance as Belgium may face yet another existential confrontation between its "warring" Dutch-speaking and Francophone politicians.  "Warring" is of course figurative, but memories are still fresh of the 1970s, when the confrontations were also physical.

Dr. Behrendt explains why the brouhaha over the proposed splitting of a federal electoral district called "BHV" - currently comprising the officially bilingual but in reality largely francophone capital Brussels, with the officially Dutch-speaking (but often with francophone majorities living in their midst) towns of Halle and Vilvoorde - has to be "gotten right" this time around.  Without going into even more arcane Belgo-Belgian political trivia, suffice it to say that the Dutch-speaking Flemish majority has sufficient votes in the national parliament to push a split through, but that there are constitutional safeguards which allow the French-speaking minority to veto (or at least temporize) such a unilateral diktat.

The future of the recently-formed Leterme government (for those who are gluttons for punishment, my blog category "Brussels" has a series of background posts on the crisis which led - very painfully - to the formation of the current government - you'll have to scroll down a bit) may depend on a negotiated solution to the BHV issue.  And here's where we get to Professor Behrendt's uti possidetis, which he interprets as "you will own what you have owned."  For those in the Francophone capital and its surrounding districts, as well as the French-speaking heartland of Wallonia in the south of the country, the "borders" set by a split of the BHV electoral district could be used - by a future Dutch-speaking Flemish nationalist majority bent on independence for Flanders - to set in concrete a "linguistic border" that would cut off hundreds of thousands of French-speakers from their linguistic cousins.

Borders - they might be imperfect, but they're all you have

For Francophone interests in the - perhaps inevitable - split of BHV, the key is to negotiate a compromise that will give the Flemish parties a face-saving "victory," while extracting important concessions: the expansion of Brussels to include Francophone-majority communes on the periphery; the formal, institutional linkage between Brussels and Wallonia; the permanent safeguarding of linguistic rights in "border" zones?  All problematic, possibly unattainable.  But the stakes are extremely high: as Dr. Behrendt concludes, the solution to BHV could wind up as a key legal element in an eventual national "divorce settlement."  Today's drawing of a voting district boundary could become tomorrow's border between two countries, should the nationalists hold sway.

Anyone who thinks uti possidetis is just for the history books (who remembers "The Treaty of Tordesillas?") should read noted Africa expert Michela Wrong in The New Statesman, about the dangers of tampering with uti possidetis:

Africa as we know it is a recent invention. Quixotic and impractical, its colonial frontiers are poorly charted and easily challenged. Fear of the mayhem that would ensue if member states regarded existing boundaries as being up for debate prompted the Organisation of African Unity, in 1964, to embrace the doctrine of uti possidetis, that colonial borders should remain as they are. The Eritrea-Ethiopia debacle, which will be finalised next month [note: after she wrote this in October 2007, fighting resulted in the February 2008 UN withdrawal from the disputed border, and there have been sporadic clashes since], undermines that principle, weakening future attempts at peaceful arbitration. The message it sends is that "final and binding" frontier rulings are negotiable; and that while minnows must obey international law, large countries with friends abroad can defy it with impunity. There could be few more dangerous signals to send a fragile continent.

"Facts on the ground" are of paramount importance in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as planners of the "separation barrier" know only too well.  Today's line in the sand, though it may not have any footing in law, is still a boundary of control, and becomes a negotiating chip.

BHV is not going to cause a shooting war between rival Belgian parties, but the point is this: it is incumbent on the responsible members of Belgium's main democratic parties, Flemish and Francophone, to get BHV right, so that the lines drawn today will not become an even more intractable bone of contention should separatist nationalism reign in a not-too-distant future.

Prioritization at the Pentagon: A Green Zone Golf Resort?

"Vision without resources is hallucination"

The above-mentioned piece of military wisdom is worth remembering as you ponder what hallucinogenic substance the Pentagon planners were ingesting when they came up with the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" for Baghdad’s Green Zone.  And this one looks like a joint (inter service) plan – so no more jokes please about Air Force blueprints for a typical new air base showing “Phase One: golf greens; Phase Two: runway.”

These hallucinatory visions of Iraq in some future era of golf vacations are outlined in today’s Guardian by Michael Howard in “Luxury Hotels and Golf: Welcome to the Green Zone.  Pentagon airs plan to turn Baghdad military redoubt into a chic urban oasis.”

A $5bn tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a "dream" makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors.  About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US State Department or private foreign companies.

... according to Navy Captain Thomas Karnowski, the chief US liaison, "When you have $1bn hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around [ed. note: a reference to the new US embassy compound, under construction], you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time."

This is May 6, not April 1, so it can't be an April Fool's prank.  Someone has been given money to play with.

Pots of Money

Resources – without which vision is hallucination – are usually not a problem in the Pentagon.  Except when it comes to prioritizing them, which then becomes intensely political.  Just look at the current flap over a rejuvenated “GI Bill,” which has a bipartisan group of war veteran Senators (joined by Democratic presidential candidates Obama and Clinton) ranged against – you guessed it – President Bush and Senator John McCain, who suddenly want to hoard money.  As if the Defense budget wasn’t already in hock to Chinese purchasers of American debt instruments.

And if $5 billion isn’t excessive for a little R&R on the Tigris, why is it so difficult to provide decent (i.e., without sewage backups) housing for soldiers returning to their barracks Stateside?  It took an outraged father of a soldier back from a combat zone, armed with a digital camera and a YouTube account, to shame the Army into action.

But we’re mixing up different pots of money.  “What color is your money?” an experienced bureaucrat would ask.  Not a reference to the monotone greenback, but to the coloration of the particular agency or appropriation that controls the money.  For the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" we’re obviously talking about an overflowing pot full of the right color of money.  There’s a hint in yesterday’s unveiling of the drawings: “an international investment consortium” smells opportunity in what looks like another “public-private” venture.

I have no crystal ball, and certainly wouldn’t wish a helicopters-off-the-roof outcome for Embassy Baghdad, but if I were a private investor, I would think more than twice about sinking my money into the “Tigris Woods.”  Maybe they’ll pick up some “political violence” risk coverage from the US government’s insurer of last resort, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC, not to be confused with OPEC, the people who are bringing you $4.00 per gallon gasoline.  But I digress.)  Though I’m not an investor, I am a taxpayer, and I would prefer that my tax dollars not be spent on such utterly outrageous frivolities as skateboard parks and country clubs while the country is on fire and sewage flows in the streets.

Meanwhile, in that trailer park on the Tigris

Last year in Vanity Fair, investigative reporter William Langewiesche called it “The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad.”  We’re talking, of course, about the new American Embassy due for completion later this year.  Langewiesche, writing late last year, speculated that

It is reasonable to assume that insurgents will soon sit in the privacy of rooms overlooking the site, and use cell phones or radios to adjust the rocket and mortar fire of their companions. Meanwhile, however, they seem to have held off, lobbing most of their ordnance elsewhere into the Green Zone, as if reluctant to slow the completion of such an enticing target.

Lately, Langewiesche’s prediction has come to pass: here’s Lennox Samuels, writing last week in Newsweek (“Unsafe Haven”)

...rockets and mortars started slamming into the Green Zone on Sunday afternoon and kept coming well into the night, as if the Shiite fighters in Sadr City were making up for the respite.  A heavy dust storm choked Baghdad, adding a sense of claustrophobia while providing the insurgents cover. "They're getting closer and closer," noted veteran security expert Mike Arrighi.  Arrighi, who works and lives in the tightly defended Zone, says that this week's barrage shows the same "consistency, intensity and ferocity" of the initial attacks that began almost a month ago.

Meanwhile, a State Department insider (“The Skeptical Bureaucrat,” a blogger who has worked in the Overseas Building Operations office – OBO, which builds US embassies) notes the policy conundrum:

... the only way left to lower our risk is to reduce the number of people on the site. Any other embassy receiving rocket and mortar fire would be evacuated or put on ordered departure, as U.S. Embassy Sanaa [Yemen] was recently after it was attacked to no effect with only four measly 51mm mortar rounds, but, again, that's not an option in the case of Baghdad.

“Not an option.”  As in “Failure Is Not An Option.”  But since the goalposts for “Success” keep shifting, how will we know when we have failed?  And as Langewiesche notes, “For the most part, however, the new embassy is not about leaving Iraq, but about staying on—for whatever reason, under whatever circumstances, at whatever cost.”

“For whatever reason..."  How about this reason, from the original AP story, for the Disneyfication of the Green Zone:

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a "zone of influence" around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

So, there we have it: you plan to spend $5 billion on a “zone of influence” to protect a $1 billion investment.  But then again, what is $5 billion for a country club when you’re spending more than twice that amount every month (sorry, when the Chinese are lending us that amount to spend) on ordnance and PX supplies to keep US troops in Iraq?

When Presidents Deliver Inconvenient Truths: The Carter Example

For the second time in a week, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times Op-Ed page inspires me to write a meager post in response.  Asking “Who Will Tell the People?” Friedman longs for an American leader who might level with the American people:

We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

Friedman comes close to recognizing the potential for such truth-telling leadership in Barack Obama.  It’s true that Obama has shown a willingness to talk frankly about difficult issues – his speech on race in America was one such example, though it’s still not clear whether the citizenry is ready for his message.

Almost thirty years ago, on July 15 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered what would come to be known as his “Crisis of Confidence” speech.  PBS, in its documentation for the “American Experience” series, provides the full text of Carter’s speech here.  Carter warned:

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

Andrew Bacevich, in his 2005 classic The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, devotes several pages of analysis to Carter’s speech, calling it “prescient, but completely misconceived” – in that “his policy prescription reflected a fundamental misreading of his fellow countrymen.”  We know that little more than a year later his Republican rival Ronald Reagan won the Presidency with his upbeat “Morning in America” message.  But as Bacevich shows, Carter was right:

Carter... sensed intuitively that a failure to reverse the nation’s energy dependence was sure to draw the United States ever more deeply into the vortex of Persian Gulf politics...  This is, of course, precisely what has come to pass, with massive and problematic implications for the nation’s security and for U.S. military posture and priorities.

Bacevich goes on to document the downward spiral:

When Carter spoke, the United States was importing approximately 43 percent of its annual requirement for oil...  Some twenty-five years later, energy imports have risen to 56 percent of annual needs.  Today, increasingly, the profile of the American military presence abroad corresponds to the location of large oil and natural gas reserves.

Carter deserves credit for being ahead of his time, but the trick for the 2008 presidential candidates is how to provide the truth (the real thing, not McCain's “Straight Talk Express” variety that is really warmed over Bush) without further depressing an already shell shocked electorate.  This is where Obama comes in.  As Friedman says today:

... the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

Let’s try to remember the power of positive thinking – tempered with a dose of Carter’s realism – as we slog through what only promises to be a debilitating finale to an endless 2007-2008 election marathon.  And refuse to play the gotcha game, while ignoring the same fundamental problems that Jimmy Carter identified almost thirty years ago.